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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

There are Plenty Of Fish to Tinder while Coffee Meets Bagel

I am a single 20 something year old in the Tri-state area. My friends and I are similar to the girls in Girls, but not quite as Emmy worthy.

Some of my male and female friends are on this journey of finding love. One doesn't date a guy unless he's making at least six figures. One says he's not sad because he's not with anyone but I can see his subtle yearn for someone to return his love. Others are settled down with who they think will be their forever. Many don't really have a clue to what's going on. And oh wait, the friends who hop from guy to guy or girl to girl because they're scared of being alone.

I'm oddly a person who has become the person that's not so obsessed with this particular portion of my life. Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in men and hope to have a forever boyfriend with kids. BUT I don't let it drag me down. I have SO much I want to accomplish in my life, why fixate on one? Therefore I was not interested in doing something like online dating. In my eyes that wasn't for someone like me. I'm more like, "If it happens, it happens." I don't want it to consume me. Wanna know a secret? It's mainly when you feel lonely. That's when nights out with friends and no hook ups become under-appreciated. You even go pass boundaries you shouldn't. I would probably become obsessed too.

After speaking to some people, I realized I also had a lot to offer and wasn't giving myself the chance to meet new guys. A lot of the times I could feel my confidence slowly disappearing. And I couldn't have that. So I decided to join some dating websites to see what the hoopla was about. Even Women's Health was talking about it. So I had to.

Coffee Meets Bagel

So I read about this site and thought the concept was interesting. You get a guy sent to you everyday. You can say Yes or No to them. The catch is that it's once a day and you have to answer before time is up. Sounds kind of fun, right? Well, the first day was okay. Wasn't sure what to put in my profile, but made it work. The first guy was kinda cute, was very smart it seemed and I used beans to see who we had in common. I clicked like. ...almost everyday after that, I wasn't interested. And for some reason a lot of them were Asian (which is funny cause when I was a kid I said I'd marry an Asian man). Then I started forgetting to check my profile. And in the end, I was just not feeling it.

Tinder

I have a few gay friends and have heard of the app, Grindr. Some used it for other things than finding a quick lay, but most used it for just that. Meeting new guys was its main function, so I thought that maybe finding something similar would help me meet new people in areas I'm often in. That's when I came across Tinder. I read a couple of reviews about it and shared it with my fans on Facebook. I even had a female friend who told me she loved it. And in the beginning, I was just confused to what was happening. I was liking profiles by accident, disliking guys I liked. Randomly had girls pop up. But I started to get mutual likes from guys and that gave me an ego boost. Some were guys I would've never thought would be interested in me. Others were guys I HOPED weren't interested. Even so, I was content with the mixture. What I started to get annoyed with was having 30 guys on my list and only 2 actually speaking to me. I had this one guy, who had a mutual friend, "clicked" with me, and sent me his number. Then he went as far as wanting to set up a date and .... *Crickets*. Wtf is that?? If I wanted to meet more men who didn't follow through, I didn't need an app for that. It's frustrating that now I have these men with me all the time cause they are located in my pocket through this app.

The other type of guy I met was the "DTF" guy. Yes. If you don't know what that means, think in the gutter and you'll get it as did I. When I declined the invitation, he lashed out. I had the conversation screenshot but the phone it was on had an accident, lucky him cause as I've started to tell every guy I meet through online dating, "...be careful this may end up in a blog". Anyway, he said some really mean things and I had to block him. Another guy said he kills black people. Blocked him. The list goes on. Needless to say, me and Tinder have a love hate relationship. And I grew tired.

Plenty of Fish

Before I uninstalled Tinder, I thought I'd try just one more online dating app. So I looked in the store and Plenty of Fish (POF) showed up. It sounded familiar, it was free, and it couldn't hurt after the annoyance I had been through. And I like giving you guys three reviews as often as possible. So I downloaded it. I automatically loved the layout of the app. It was pretty intense with how deep they went with the questions but I understood.

The first few days I spoke to a few guys I thought weren't quite for me but nice conversationalists. A few I really could see me interested in. Others made me blush in a teen girl kind of way. And for every one of those, a guy I would ignore in the street would message me, and I'd ignore again. But I really didn't find them as annoying since they weren't as persistent.

I'm still in the process of evaluating this one but for me it's a good fit. And I believe that the fit is important I've learned. Tinder was like another chore. I made myself look through it right before bed every night, otherwise how would I get matches? And Coffee meets Bagel, I feel like it just didn't know me.

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In the end, if you're looking for Mr. right online, I'm not judging you anymore. I kind of get it. Especially for those power women. Everyday you may pass by men who are your type and great catches, but you're too busy rushing to the next thing. These apps give you a second while waiting for your coffee to meet 20 guys. That's pretty convenient. People may argue that dating isn't supposed to be planned and fit into a schedule, but as times change dating should probably change as well. Do you agree?